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@ -200,3 +200,66 @@ about worker's rights. |
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While it was a funny situation, in a way, it did make my life quite a bit |
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harder. Once I finally got back to the hostel I stayed in for the night, and the |
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next day headed on to Bruges. |
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## Bruges, Belgium |
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I'll be honest and say that 90% of the reason I wanted to go to Bruges was |
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because of the movie, _In Bruges_, which is one of my all time favorites. The |
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movie was shot almost completely in the city, and makes a lot of fun out of |
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tourists coming to see it. "It's a fucking fairytale" is a common refrain in it. |
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Bruges always had a pretty solid tourist game, but after the movie it really |
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took off, so that most of the other people in my hostel said they had only |
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really heard of the city from the movie too. |
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{% include image.html |
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dir="mr-worldwide" file="bruges-pano-2018.jpg" width=1492 |
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descr="View from atop the the Belfry of Bruges, 2018" |
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%} |
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The city itself is actually beautiful. Once out of the busy tourist area, |
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centered around the Belfry, the streets and canals wind around through quiet |
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neighborhoods and small parks. Bruges is sometimes called the Venice of the |
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North (though Amsterdam also calls itself this), due to its history as an |
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important historical commercial port built on top of a maze of canals. There are |
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many canal boat tours available, but I was too ~~cheap~~ poor to spring for one, |
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so I took a free walking tour instead. |
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"Free" walking tours are a fairly common business in European cities. The tour |
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guides collect people from various hostels they have arrangements with, and walk |
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them around the city, talking about whatever is worth talking about. Most that I |
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took were quite good, weaving together the history of a place, its culture both |
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then and now, and current events, all while giving you a good lay-of-the-land |
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and two-ish hours of being out-and-about. At the end of the tour the guides ask |
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for tips/donations, and most people give between $5-20. |
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On the tour of Bruges our guide had pointed out a sea shell cemented into the |
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pavement. This was part, he said, of the Camino De Santiago. In the middle ages |
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the Catholic Church considered pilgrimage to be a suitable form of atonement for |
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sins/crimes, and so many people throughout Europe were sent away from their |
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towns to travel by land to the Santiago de Compestela Cathedral in northern |
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Spain. Over time the various routes materialized into a network, denoted by sea |
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shells or sea shell symbols, which stretches throughout Europe and which people |
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continue to use today. |
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Even as the guide was telling us about it I knew I wanted to do. As the trip |
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wore on I talked to a few people who had done the pilgrimage, and for every one |
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I became more and more convinced that I must do it. |
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{% include image.html |
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dir="mr-worldwide" file="bruges-canal-2018.jpg" width=1920 |
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descr="Canals of Bruges, 2018" |
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%} |
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I made a few friends in my hostel, our friendship having been forged in the |
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struggle of trying to find an affordable meal in Bruges. Every restaurant in |
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Bruges, it seemed, did "full" meals, where you pay a fixed amount and get two, |
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three, or four courses. But the fixed amount was never lower than €45, and so we |
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spent a lot of time searching for alternatives. After a lot of searching we |
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found a couple places which were reasonably priced for the couple nights we were |
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all there, and one of the group knew of a hard-to-find pub which made and sold |
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13% alcohol beer for a few euro. After all that Bruges wasn't as unaffordable |
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as it first seemed, and was a lot of fun, but it took a bit of work to make it |
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so. |
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After Bruges I took a bus back to Brussels, where I hung out for a while waiting |
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for my next bus which would take me across the pond. |
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